Asian stock markets on Friday followed Wall Street lower after rising US bond yields dampened buying enthusiasm driven by the US Federal Reserve’s promise of low interest rates.
Taipei, Shanghai, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Sydney retreated.
Overnight, Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 index closed down 1.5 percent, putting it on track for its first weekly loss in three weeks. Stocks slipped after bond yields rose, which can prompt investors to shift money out of stocks.
A day earlier, the S&P 500 hit a new high after the Fed promised to keep its key interest rate near zero through 2023 even as it forecast inflation would pick up.
“The rapid rise in long-end US yields has spooked investors,” AxiCorp Financial Services Pty chief global markets strategist Stephen Innes said.
The sell-off “caught some investors wrong-footed” after the Fed’s pledge, he said.
The MSCI Asia-Pacific Index on Friday lost 0.65 percent to 208.49 points, but rose 0.3 percent for the week.
The TAIEX on Friday lost 1.3 percent to 16,070.24 points, down 1.1 percent weekly.
The Shanghai Composite Index sank 1.7 percent to 3,404.66 points, down 1.2 percent for the week.
The Nikkei 225 in Tokyo lost 1.4 percent to 29,792.05 points, paring its weekly gain to 0.25 percent. The TOPIX on Friday inched up 0.2 percent, bringing its weekly gain to 3.13 percent.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index on Friday retreated 1.4 percent to 28,990.94 points, up 0.9 percent weekly.
The KOSPI in Seoul on Friday shed 0.9 percent to 3,039.53 points, down 0.5 percent for the week.
Sydney’s S&P/ASX 200 on Friday gave up 0.6 percent to 6,708.20 points, ending the week down 0.9 percent.
India’s SENSEX on Friday gained 1.3 percent, but was down 1.8 for the week.
Also on Friday, the Bank of Japan left its easy monetary policy and goal of 2 percent inflation unchanged, but widened the band in which long-term interest rates would be allowed to rise or fall around its target to 0.25 percent from 0.2 percent.
Investors are swinging between hopes the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines would allow global business and travel to resume, and fears of possible inflation caused by government stimulus spending and easy credit.
Additional reporting by staff writer
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said the DRAM supply crunch could extend through 2028, as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has led the world’s major memory makers to dramatically reduce production of standard DRAM and allocate a significant portion of their capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. The most severe supply constraints would stretch to the first half of next year due to “very limited” increases in new DRAM capacity worldwide, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told a news briefing. The company plans to increase monthly 12-inch wafer capacity to 20,000 in the first half of 2028 after a
Taiwan has enough crude oil reserves for more than 100 days and sufficient natural gas reserves for more than 11 days, both above the regulatory safety requirement, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday, adding that the government would prioritize domestic price stability as conflicts in the Middle East continue. Overall, energy supply for this month is secure, and the government is continuing efforts to ensure sufficient supply for next month, Kung told reporters after meeting with representatives from business groups at the ministry in Taipei. The ministry has been holding daily cross-ministry meetings at the Executive Yuan to ensure
Property transactions in the nation’s six special municipalities plunged last month, as a lengthy Lunar New Year holiday combined with ongoing credit tightening dampened housing market activity, data compiled by local land administration offices released on Monday showed. The six cities recorded a total of 10,480 property transfers last month, down 42.5 percent from January and marking the second-lowest monthly level on record, the data showed. “The sharp drop largely reflected seasonal factors and tighter credit conditions,” Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) deputy research manager Chen Chin-ping (陳金萍) said. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday fell in February this year, reducing
RSS